Warm Me Up
by vakashick
Summary: Eren goes away for an art exhibition, and Levi stays home. Seven days and six nights without the kid will be easy.


"I'm going to miss you," Eren murmured against his lips.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm going to miss you too. Now get going before you miss your taxi." Even as he said it, instead of pushing his lover toward the yellow cab parked at the curb, Levi pulled Eren closer and caught his lips in another kiss. The kiss was gentle and soft and everything both of them usually were not, but it was exactly what the older man wanted. Levi wasn't the greatest with words, but he hoped Eren could feel exactly how much he was going to miss him without him having to trip over a verbal confession. By the way Eren sighed into his mouth and wrapped his arms tighter around his neck, Levi thought that maybe he did.

"I'll see you in a week," Levi whispered when he reluctantly broke away. He placed a kiss on both of Eren's eyelids and a final one on his nose.

"Longest week of my life."

"You'll live." Levi paused as if remembering who he was talking to. "You better. For the love of god, Eren, don't do anything stupid. I won't be around to save your dumb ass."

"Hey! I…Uh…At least…er…my ass isn't dumb!"

"Good comeback. But seriously, Eren, I expect _you_ to come back to me in one piece, even your dumb ass, you hear me?"

"I can give you your cum back; it's still in my dumb-"

"Okay, okay, time to go. Get in the cab." Sliding his hands down from where they were cupping his lover's cheeks to his shoulders, Levi began nudging the younger man backwards towards the street.

Eren just wiggled his eyebrows at him. "And don't you mean _especially_ my ass?"

The dark-haired man rolled his eyes. "Don't get cocky. I could survive without your ass."

"Uh-huh sureeeeeee. You shouldn't lie about these things, Levi."

"Tch."

Eren laughed, and Levi's heart melted. He was really going to miss that goofy sound this week. Hearing it over the phone would definitely not be the same.

When they had finished loading up Eren's suitcase into the trunk, the two stood beside the open car door. "Are you sure _you're_ going to be fine without me for a week?"

Levi raised an eyebrow. "Are you kidding? Seven days without you constantly making messes and giving me headaches, how will I survive?"

It was Eren's turn to roll his eyes. "You know you'll clean anyway, and I'm not that bad."

"True, and no, you're not. I'll be fine, Eren. Don't worry about me. Just hurry up and get there so you can get home. I'll be waiting."

"I'll call you when I reach the hotel." Levi nodded and watched Eren get into the backseat.

"Take care."

"I love you, Levi."

"I love you too, kid."

* * *

"Shit!" Levi hissed.

 _"What is it? Are you alright?"_

With the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, Levi danced around the kitchen, hand thrashing back and forth through the air. He turned on the sink, and the moment his skin made contact with the cool water, he sighed. "Yeah, just burned my finger on the fucking stove."

Eren's laughter rang out loud over of the speakers, and Levi was right, it wasn't the same.

"Tch. Thanks for your fucking concern, brat."

The older man could hear his lover trying to catch his breath, but a few chuckles still tumbled passed those lips he already missed. It had only been a few hours since he'd kissed them. Seven more days till he could do it again.

 _"Why should I be concerned when you said you would be fine without me, hm? I also explicitly remember you telling me_ not _to worry about you."_

"Shut up, Eren."

 _"Who's the brat now?"_ Eren's voice was full of unbridled mirth.

"Still you." Levi shut off the water and turned back to the stove where his attempt at grilled cheese was charred black and burnt. Peanut butter and jelly it was. "So how's the hotel?"

 _"Amazing! The bed is super comfortable, and the room is just as clean as our apartment. They must have a housekeeping staff full of Levi clones!"_

Levi chuckled at that as he pulled out a loaf of bread and two containers of filling, pausing at the pantry for a moment before grabbing Eren's bag of marshmallows as a second thought. "Well that's good; at least you won't be bringing back bed bugs. I'd hate to have to burn your entire suitcase."

 _"As if I'd let you."_ Levi heard rustling on the other end of the connection then a zipper being unzipped then an earsplitting scream that made him almost drop the phone. "Eren?" He waited for some sign that his lover hadn't killed himself on their first night apart.

The boy's voice came across shrill like a dying animal. _"I LEFT MY PAJAMAS!"_

Letting out a sigh of relief he hadn't realized he was holding, the older man rubbed a hand down his face and leaned against the sink. All the straining muscles in his shoulders and back uncoiled and relaxed from that brief moment of panic. "Fuck, Eren. I thought it was something serious."

 _"This is serious! How am I supposed to go to sleep without my favorite pajamas?!"_

"Just put on a t-shirt and a pair of boxers."

 _"You. Don't. Understand. Levi, it's not the same!"_ Eren's voice was pained, and he was right, Levi didn't understand. Even after all this time of being together, he didn't quite get his young lover's obsession with those damn pajamas. It could be a hundred degrees outside and summer and Eren would still be in that long-sleeved shirt and matching pants. Eren himself already ran at a higher temperature than most people, so it was surprising to the older man that the boy didn't overheat in those damn things. And the design…was ridiculous. Levi knew Eren was a bit of a man-child, twenty-two years old and _still_ living up to his pet name, but those down-right hideous pajamas were the definition of "What the fuck, Eren. Grow up." The fabric was light blue – soft, Levi had to admit - cotton with weird naked contortionists all over them. Giants, Levi mentally corrected himself. _Man-eating_ giants, according to Eren. And to top it all off there was even a fucking nightcap. Which Eren wore. Of course he did.

"If you think your whining about this is going to touch some soft spot deep inside my soul and spur me to drive hours to bring you your pajamas, then news flash, I don't have one. So you're just going to have to deal with it."

 _"You're so cruel, Levi! I don't know how I'm going to be able to sleep now."_

"If you seriously can't sleep without them, then you have way more issues than I thought you had."

 _"It's not_ just _the pajamas."_ Eren's words hitched and went higher in pitch. _"I have to deal with sleeping in a different bed for six nights without you AND them. It's going to be impossible!"_

Levi would deny all evidence that his heart quite literally skipped a beat. Eren was so innocently and naturally forward he probably didn't even notice that what he had just said made the older man's next sarcastic retort catch in his throat. He was definitely not grinning like a lovesick idiot.

"Aw, how sweet, Eren, but that's not going to be enough to make me bring them to you. If I can survive this week sleeping alone – and I will - then so can you. Just sleep naked." Levi's grin twisted into a smirk. "And send me pics."

 _"Pervert._ " Levi heard Eren sigh in defeat. _"Fine. Well, I'm going to go take a shower-"_

"Send me pics of that too."

 _"Stop! You don't deserve dirty pics. Anyway, I'm going to take a shower, and then try to get some sleep. I have to be up early to set up for the exhibit. I'll talk to you tomorrow."_

"Sweet dreams, Eren."

"Good night, Levi."

Levi clicked the button to end the call and set his phone down on the counter top. After finishing up his sandwich and fixing the kitchen back to its state of perfection, the dark-haired man shut off all the lights and retired to the bathroom for a nice soak in the tub before slipping under the covers of the king-sized four poster canopy he normally shared with Eren. He fell asleep around midnight with a hollow feeling, in his arms, in the bed, and he turned to face away from that side that was truly empty.

* * *

"Ngh."

Sleepy grey eyes cracked open, and Levi shivered. It wasn't a normal shiver, wasn't a cute shiver either like the ones he saw tickle up Eren's spine when he teased the nape of the boy's neck with his tongue. No, it was a full-body convulsion, a violent force racking through him, an icy current searing through his veins, chilling the blood in its wake and freezing as deep as his bones. He could feel each and every vertebrae of his spine snap and crack and pop together with sickening noises reminiscent of a snooker hall.

Levi was, quite literally, freezing his balls off.

"Why the fuck is it so fucking cold all of a sudden?"

When he whispered those words to no one but himself – teeth chattering in harmony with the knocking in his joints – he was shocked that he couldn't see his breath in the air. He glanced up at the ceiling and found his answer.

The fan was on full-blast.

But…the fact that he was _this_ cold was strange, because he always slept with the fan. Maybe it was the changing seasons. It _was_ almost fall, after all…

Up with a grunt, Levi padded barefoot to the switch by the door, flicking it down, and heading back to bed as quickly as he had left it. The notification light on his phone was blinking, so he unlocked the device and checked his messages.

 **From Eren [Received at 1:21 AM]:** I can't sleep.

 **From Eren [Received at 1:24 AM]:** U awake?

 **From Eren [Received at 1:32 AM]:** Guess not. Sorry.

Levi yawned and typed back a response.

 **To Eren:** I am now. Is everything okay?

He waited for a few seconds to see if the little dots would appear to let him know that Eren was working on a message, but they didn't, so Levi locked his phone and returned it to its spot on the nightstand. The alarm clock by his head read a little after two in the morning, and he figured Eren must have drifted off already. Levi turned away from the dim green glow and closed his eyes. He had four hours till he needed to wake up for work. Maybe he'd be able to get a little bit of sleep too.

For thirty minutes, he tried, but an hour passed, and Levi was still wide awake and shivering. Even more so than before. The fan wasn't the answer.

"What the hell is going on?"

Maybe he was getting sick. He rarely ever did, so he wasn't really sure what it felt like anymore, but the shivers running up and down his spine didn't feel like the chills that came with a fever to him. They reminded Levi more of the time Eren had had the bright idea – as all his ideas were – to jump in the river in the dead of winter. They lived far enough south that the water wasn't frozen over, but that didn't change the fact that Eren had no fucking idea how to swim. Levi had had to jump in to save him.

Eren came out completely unaffected by the cold, whereas Levi had almost caught hypothermia.

The warmth leeching out of his skin now was oddly similar to that day, and Levi wondered why. The fan was off; the room was set to its normal 26 degrees. So why did it feel like the fucking Arctic?

Levi finally decided that he had no clue and that he would just have to grab more blankets. Getting back out of bed, Levi left the room and snagged a few extra from the linen closet down the hallway. He never had a reason to use them before, and he wasn't even sure why they had them in the first place. Eren was always burn-

Oh.

Eren.

Levi stopped walking and just stared at the blankets folded in his hands.

 _This was Eren's doing, wasn't it?_

The damn brat was a cuddler, always wrapping his limbs around Levi like a strait jacket. No matter how many times the older man unwound them from his body during the night, he'd wake up in their grip, unable to move and internally combusting. The boy was hot, really fucking hot in every sense of the term, especially in those pajamas he always wore – those were the exception to the sexy kind of hot – and now it seemed that Eren had finally ruined him. And Levi had let him. And now he was screwed without Eren there to warm him up.

"Tch."

Levi refused to accept that he couldn't sleep without the little shithead. Throwing the blankets on the bed, Levi got under the covers, wrapped them all around himself, and aggressively willed himself to fall back to sleep.

For a while, he dozed, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, before the shivering started up again, and his eyes popped open.

"I'm going to kill him when he gets home."

Resisting the urge to text Eren how much he hated him in that moment (he didn't want to give the kid any satisfaction to know that he was also struggling on his own), Levi just stared at the wall. Despite everything, he was huddled in a ball at the edge of the mattress with all his layers of covers tucked snug around his body, pulled all the way up to his neck, yet he still felt like he was frozen in a fucking iceberg out in the middle of the Siberian tundra.

Underneath the piles of blankets, he was wearing what he usually wore to bed: a t-shirt and a pair of boxers, the exact outfit he had recommended Eren put on earlier when they talked over the phone about his…pajamas…he had left…at home…

Levi shook his head against the pillow.

"No. I'm not that desperate. No fucking way."

But another violent shiver, and Levi was done. With everything.

He stalked over to the bathroom, and his sight immediately fell on the shelf right at eye-level where dozens of big naked people smiled at him, mocking him.

"Fuck you."

Levi grabbed the pajama pants almost violently and stepped his legs inside the holes. They were too long for him, and he had to fold them over a few times at the waist and roll up the bottoms so they didn't drag across the floor. He pulled the top over his head and did the same thing with the sleeves that fell over his fingers. Ignoring the nightcap, because fuck if he was going to put that thing on his head, Levi moved passed the mirror, glancing at his reflection briefly as he walked by.

Yep, he looked like a moron.

Back to bed again, Levi got under the covers and checked the clock.

4:15.

Great. He was going to get less than two hours of sleep…

But he didn't even get that because the bed was still cold, and all Levi could think in his exhausted mind was that he had five more nights of this hell to look forward to.

"Fuck you, Eren. I fucking hate you. What have you and your dumb ass done to me?" Levi turned over on his side, the light of the rising sun shining through the cracks in the curtains.

"You hear that, Eren. I fucking miss you."

* * *

"I'm home!"

Eren called out to his lover as he stepped into the foyer and set down his suitcase on the tile flooring. He didn't make it two feet before he was tackled to the ground, head hitting the door with a _thud_ , all the air leaving his lungs in a rush at the weight now bearing down on his chest. Strong thighs were tucked tightly around his waist; hands were clenched the fabric of his green t-shirt; and a very angry Levi was pressed nose-to-nose right in his face.

"Uh, Le-"

"Shut up. Do you know how much fucking sleep I got this past week?"

Eren opened his mouth to answer him, but Levi growled, and he shut it immediately, shaking his head back and forth instead.

"Do you know whose fault it is that I barely slept at all? I'll give you one guess."

Eren didn't get a chance to guess.

"Yours. Don't you ever fucking go away for seven days again. It's too damn cold in this apartment without your fucking furnace of a body here to warm it up."

Eren didn't dare say that they had a thermostat and a heater. He just nodded, a smile forming at the corners of his lips despite how infuriated his lover seemed to be about his lack of sleep. On every other normal day the man didn't sleep because of his insomnia, he didn't complain at all. Hmm, interesting.

When Eren didn't answer despite not being asked a question this time, Levi shook him roughly. "Got it?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Good boy. Now stay still; I'm fucking exhausted."

Eren didn't protest when Levi pushed him down onto his back and curled up against his side. He didn't mention Levi's choice of pajamas nor move to brush the nightcap away from tickling his nose. He just made himself comfortable – as comfortable as he could be on the hard porcelain and with the overwhelming heat of their bodies – and closed his eyes.

But right before he fell over the edge, Eren felt a puff of breath against his skin.

"Welcome home, Eren."

The young man smiled wider at those muffled words, pulled Levi just a little bit closer and fell asleep right there in the doorway with his lover in his arms.

And it was warm. Too warm. But neither minded. Not even a little bit.

* * *

Omake: Eren now leaves his pajamas at home when he goes away. And maybe, Levi wears them every night till he comes back. Maybe.


End file.
